You are underway in mid-ocean when you hear a distress message. The position of the sender is 150 miles away. No other vessel has acknowledged the distress. Your maximum speed is 5 knots and due to the seriousness of the distress, you cannot arrive on scene to provide effective assistance. What action should you take?
• MAYDAY is for distress (grave and imminent danger) and MAYDAY RELAY is used when you are not in distress but are relaying someone else’s distress call • Your obligation to assist includes helping to get the distress traffic properly handled, even if you physically cannot reach the scene in time • Distinguish between distress, urgency (PAN PAN), and safety (SECURITE) calls and when each is used
• Ask yourself: since you cannot effectively assist on scene, what is the best way you can still help the vessel in distress using your radio? • Which of the options correctly describes relaying someone else’s distress situation, and which options either give no help or misuse distress procedures? • Consider what the proper priority level of this traffic is: is this still a distress situation, or just an urgency or safety matter?
• Verify which phrase is used when relaying another vessel’s distress call, not your own • Eliminate any option that tells you to ignore a distress call or to pretend your own vessel is in distress • Confirm that an urgency call (e.g., PAN PAN) is lower priority than a distress call and therefore not correct for a grave and imminent danger situation
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